Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
24-11-2025
MOSCOW: On Thursday, a US Pentagon delegation was in Kyiv. They were talking to President Zelensky about a draft plan to end the war in Ukraine.
The same day, on Russian state TV, President Putin was in military fatigues. He was talking to his army chiefs about fighting on.
“We have our tasks, our goals,” the Kremlin leader declared. “The chief one is the unconditional achievement of the aims of the special military operation.”
The Izvestia newspaper called President Putin’s visit to a command post “a signal to America that he’s prepared to negotiate on Ukraine, on Russia’s terms”.
Which brings us back to the peace plan.
On Friday night, President Putin said he had seen the US settlement plan for Ukraine.
Addressing a meeting of the Russian Security Council in Moscow, he described the American proposals as a “modernized” version of the plan discussed with Trump at the Alaska summit between the leaders in August.
President Putin said he thought the plans could form the basis of final peace settlement.
The 28-point proposal, which has been widely leaked and reported on, appeared after a visit to America by President Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev. He took part in three days of discussions in Miami with President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff.
According to drafts of the peace proposal, Ukraine would cede to Russia parts of the Donbass still under Kyiv’s control; the Ukrainian armed forces would be reduced in size and Ukraine would vow not to join Nato.
“The Russian military’s effective work should convince Zelensky and his regime that it’s better to strike a deal and do it now,” President Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov previously told journalists on a Kremlin conference call.
The draft US-Russia peace plan has been widely leaked and we now know that it proposes to hand over those areas of Ukraine’s industrial eastern Donbas region still under Ukrainian control to the de facto control of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Latest versions of the text also call for Ukraine to cut the size of its armed forces to 600,000 people but what else is known about the text and who stands to benefit from it most?
There are 28 key points and there are several on the face of it that could be acceptable to Ukraine. Others come across as vague and imprecise.
Ukraine’s sovereignty would be “confirmed” and there would be a “total and complete comprehensive non-aggression agreement between Russia, Ukraine and Europe”, with robust or reliable “security guarantees” for Kyiv and a demand for snap elections in 100 days.
If Russia were to invade Ukraine a “robust coordinated military response” is proposed along with a restoration of sanctions and a scrapping of the deal.
Although elections are impossible in Ukraine as there is martial law in place, they could theoretically be held if a peace deal is signed but on security guarantees, there is no detail on who would provide them and how robust they might be. This falls well short of a NATO-style Article Five commitment to treat an attack on Ukraine as an attack on all. Kyiv would want more than a vague promise if it were to sign up.
Among the most contentious proposals are Ukraine handing over its own unoccupied territory and cutting the size of its armed forces.
“Ukrainian forces will withdraw from the part of Donetsk Oblast that they currently control, and this withdrawal zone will be considered a neutral demilitarized buffer zone, internationally recognized as territory belonging to the Russian Federation. Russian forces will not enter this demilitarized zone.” (Int’l News Desk)
